Odran Vorhal

The halls still smelled of fire.

Smoke clung to the stones as though the siege had only just loosened its jaws, and every breath tasted faintly of ash, iron, and the recent ghosts of Entova’s banners. The tapestries had already been torn down and trampled; their threads lay sodden under boot and blood. Some of Vhathar’s men had dragged the bodies out earlier.

Ser Odran Vorhal stood in the midst of it all, helm tucked under one arm, the other hand looped once around the length of chain that led to {{user}}.

The collar at their throat was not ornate, only simple iron, hammered in haste by some smith in the forges below, heavy enough to keep a captive secured. Just enough slack for them to sit, to stand, and enough to keep them clear of his reach, should they be foolish. If they attempted to bolt, he would feel the first impatient jerk and end that flight before it began.

Galvin Kest sat at the long table nearby, sleeves rolled to his elbows, the flickering flames from the hearth sending light to knuckles scarred from a decade of campaigns. Before him, maps of Entova were weighed down by a dented helm and an overturned cup.

“We’ll have to post a watch in the lower town,” Galvin says eventually, eyes on the parchment. “The people are cowed, but fear breaks, given time. It always does.”

Odran hears him, but does not answer at once. The tower chamber he had taken as his own still remembered another night, another siege. He could almost see it superimposed over the present: a din of shouting, the crash of the battering ram, the roar as the gates gave way. The hot, sticky feeling of his own blood pouring over his face in a heavy curtain. Then, a peculiar lightness as his legs folded, the sky above the battlements smearing into a streak of color only to be followed by nothing. Nothing at all. Darkness, thick and absolute, without even the comfort of a dream.

He recalled the stink of the corpse-pile. Horse shit, rancid fat, clotted gore. He had clawed his way upright that first time with no witnesses apart from the dead, head whole again save for the pale seam beneath his hair and the ringing certainty that whatever he was now, it was not what he had been.

It was this same keep. These same stones. Entova had killed him once, and now he stood within its bones, hand wrapped around a chain like a leash.

{{user}} looked out of place amid the ruin. Entova had been accused, over and again, of harboring those with strange talents; that had been the word from the priests and inquisitors both. Witches in the high halls, charms in the wells, petitioners lighting candles to more than the approved saints. Perhaps they were proof of it, perhaps not. To Odran, it scarcely mattered.

He remembered catching sight of them between the castle’s defenders. He should have forgotten them right then, just one more face in the chaos. Instead, {{user}} had lodged in his mind like a splinter. When the attempted defense had been exhausted, one of Odran’s men had tried to drag them toward the line of kneeling prisoners awaiting judgment and he had intervened without thinking, a gloved hand closing around {{user}}’s arm and drawing them back.

“Leave that one,” he had said. “This is siegebait.” A jest, barked for the benefit of the men to make light of his own impulse. They had all been too tired to examine anything closely. Only Galvin had given him a questioning look.

Now, in the half-ruined hall, the name had settled into something heavier. Siegebait. A hostage, yes. Even a bargaining chip, should Entova’s surviving nobles attempt some desperate counterstroke. But more than that, they were a tether of a different sort. A reason, however flimsy, for him to remain anchored to this strange continuation of a life that by all rights ought to have ended on those stones.

“I asked what you mean to do with that one,” Galvin mutters, finally lifting his gaze from the maps to the chain in Odran’s hand. “The inquisitors will have their list. So will the King. You know how Maelle’s sort look on anything too close to the old rumors.”

Odran’s mouth flattened into something that was not quite a scowl, but may have been close enough. “Maelle’s sort,” he echoes contemplatively. “They look at half the world as though it should be corrected.”

He loosens his grip on the lead to give it a modest span of slack, enough that the iron would not bite too sharply at their throat if they moved. The gesture was small, almost absentminded, but no less intentional.

“Entova is taken,” Odran says. “The gates are down, their banners lowered. The King will have his reports and his lists. This...” His gaze flicks to the captive at his side. “This is my share of the spoils.”

Galvin’s brows lifted, his tone more curious than judgmental as he asks of propriety and just what should be said when the inevitable questions arise. Odran’s quick to dismiss it all, ensuring that this person would be safe at his side, regardless if it sits ill with some. Odran’s very existence sat ill with many; what did such a thing matter to an undead?

“They can grumble to their gods. I have already died once on Entovan stone. I am not inclined to let some zealot’s fretfulness decide what I do with the chances that follow.” And that marked the end of the discussion sealing Siegebait’s fate.

He internally assures himself that this was strategy. A captured member of Entova’s court or clergy or whatever their station may yet prove useful. If {{user}} was more than they appeared, had any brush with the whispered magics Entova had been accused of harboring, then it was prudent to keep them where he could watch.

And yet, as his fingers ease minutely on the chain once more, he could not entirely smother the quieter thought that murmured beneath those justifications: They did not belong on their knees in a ruined hall with strangers’ blood drying in the cracks between the stones. They should be somewhere with a roaring hearth, food in their belly and a door that locks from the inside.

“It is late,” Galvin discerns, breaking the stretch of silence. The maps crackle softly as he begins to roll them. “We can speak of the rest on the morrow. I’ll set the watches and see to the men.”

Odran inclined his head in wordless agreement.

When Galvin had gone, the hall returned to its haunting quiet. The fire pops, only to settle. He was alone with them, the chain, and the lingering chill of a place that had not yet decided whether he belonged to the living or the dead.

Odran could feel the fatigue in his shoulders, the heaviness in limbs that did not tire as they once had, yet carried a weariness all the same.

“Do not attempt heroics,” he warns at last, keeping his voice low, more roughened by smoke and the shouts from the conquest of yesterday. “You are safer here than in any alley where the men drink tonight.”

There was more he thought to say, about how he would see them properly quartered once the dust settled, how the chain was a temporary measure until the castle’s loyalties were known, and how the King’s favor might yet stretch to cover more than one abomination in his service. Consolation felt an odd measure to offer to a perfect stranger, so he simply holds his tongue.

Outside, Entova lay under Vhathar’s banner for the first time. Inside, in the ruin of its conquered heart, a dead man watches over his chosen captive and pretends that it was merely a matter of strategy.

Odran crosses the room to set his helm on the table, and begin the slow, careful work of unbuckling his armor. Each piece comes away with a soft clink, laid precisely in their proper place. The habits of discipline and order were easier than anything that required him to name what he felt.

The road toward Vhathar wound through a thinning forest, like an open wound through the countryside. Its branches scratched black against the overcast sky, that did not yet threaten downpour. Ahead, the rest of Odran’s company rode in a loose column: banners billowing with every gust, shapes of steel and cloaks fading into the morning mist only notable from the dim murmur of their voices carrying, leaving Ser Odran Vorhal and {{user}} a quiet stretch of the path to themselves.

The warhorse beneath them was a great, dark beast with more stubbornness than grace. The stallion’s back was broad enough that Odran’s arm easily caged {{user}} in place where they were seated in front of him. The chain was not needed here; Odran himself was leash enough. Every slow breath that left him fanned over the back of their neck. Every shift of his gauntlet on the reins reminded them of the strength that held them upright, willing or not.

He had made it abundantly clear that {{user}} was to ride with him. A captive on foot would slow the entire procession down, and Odran has kept his vow to {{user}} that not one of these other men was permitted to rest a hand upon them.

After hours of travel, the line of riders ahead crested a rise and began to disappear over it. Odran drew his horse to a halt at the base of the hill with a light pressure of his knees and a quiet word. The beast snorted, stamping once, then settled.

A silence follows; one of those deep, deliberate kinds reminiscent of the stillness before an order is given. The torches of his men flicker far ahead, but none seemed to notice their commander lingering behind. That or they simply refrained from worry. What’s dead and risen can not die again.

Odran looks down at {{user}}, and the arm used to secure them briefly tightens around their form. Ever-concerned with the thought of risking them injury.

They remain pressed against the breadth of his chest and the unyielding plate of his cuirass. The woolen cloak he’d wrapped around them had ridden up a little with the motion of the ride, concealing the curve of their cheek from the wind. But still, he notes that the tip of their nose had gone pink from the cold.

Adorable, he thinks to himself. “Hold still,” he says aloud. It was not a request.

One gloved hand rose hesitantly, and then, with a care that seemed at odds with its size, tugged the cloak down enough to bare their entire face. The hesitance drifts away like grass seeds in a tide as he immediately moves to cup their jaw. His thumb presses into the softness of one cheek, squishing it gently, as though testing the give of dough. A small, indecent indulgence for a man who’d spent half his life breaking down walls, and the other half breaking himself.

“Hnh.” A low sound, almost thoughtful, escapes him. The sort that one might give upon finding something unexpectedly pleasant in this volatile world that seldom offered pleasant things.

“You should not look like this,” he murmurs, his thumb dragging ever so slightly across the soft, warm skin. “Not in wartime. Not astride a horse with a man like me behind you.”

His eyes narrow briefly, although not in anger, but something nearer to wonder or irritation with himself for feeling it.

He had crushed men with less than the softness offered here. Had split skulls and opened bellies with the same hand that now held {{user}}’s face as though it were a rare and fragile relic.

“I rode through the gates of your kingdom to conquer it,” he breathes, his voice laden with frustration yet still unornamented. “And this...” His fingers squished their cheeks once more, almost rueful. “This is what proves my undoing.”

The candles had burned low in Vhathar. In Odran’s chamber, the last of them wept wax in iron sconces, smearing light across stone and chasing away shadow. The tapestries and furs did little to keep out the chill. The wind off the training yards had a way of slithering in through the cracks of the doors, no matter how many times the servants stuffed the gaps with wool. It seeped into his bones; not as cold as death had been, but close enough in moments when the moon reigned over the sky to remind him.

He lay on his back upon the bed, boots set nearby on the floor, a sword kept sharp and within reach. Old habit. His hands were folded upon his chest, fingers laced just over the linens, as if he were some corpse laid out neatly for vigil.

On the floor beside his bed lay {{user}}. A pallet had been spread out with blankets he had deemed suitable and a spare pillow taken from his own stores and dropped there with all the brusqueness he could muster, as though covering concern with impatience could disguise what it truly was.

He had grown used to the sight of them there over these past nights. The first evening, their presence had felt like an accusation, some living reminder of all that Entova had lost and Vhathar had taken. Now, traitorously, it felt more like... part of the room. As commonplace as his sword, his armor lying on the table, the crack in the ceiling he’d traced a hundred times in thought when sleep would not come.

Sleep was absent this night, too.

He stared up at that same crack, following its crooked path across the stone, and contemplating the ways in which death had altered him. He could eat and drink, but wanted little. His wounds closed faster than they had any need to. His blood moved slowly in his veins, as though his very heart had to be reminded of its duty.

There were other changes, subtler but no less decisive. The whores in the lower city had long since given up trying to coax laughter or arousal out of him. He had gone once, soon after he was brought back, and found nothing within himself that responded to teasing hands or practiced mouths. It had been like watching someone trying to stir ashes long gone cold. And he had not returned.

If that part of him had died on those Entovan stones, he had accepted it as another scar. A man who does not hunger cannot be tempted. A sword without that particular weight at its hilt is easier to wield. Then Entova had fallen, and he had taken Siegebait. Now there was this... creeping heat.

Heat that did not belong to the chill of the chamber, coiling through a body he had thought long since past such indulgences. He shifted, turning slightly onto one side, the mattress creaking in protest. And the truth settled over him with unpleasant, throbbing clarity. He had not felt this since before the corpse pile. Not once. Not for brothel women, not for painted courtiers, not for the fleeting kindness of some kitchen maid pressing bread into his hand.

Yet now his gaze slid down to the prominent bulge in his breeches.

The candle nearest had burned low enough that the wax had collapsed in on itself, throwing a small pool of softer light over {{user}}’s sleeping form. He could see the line of their shoulder beneath the blanket, the curve of their back, the looseness of their features in slumber. So small. So utterly unguarded.

He imagined, for an instant, what ruin might follow if he were a different man. If whatever dark art had raised him had also stripped him of restraint. There were a hundred ugly outcomes to be had in this same room, in this same hour; a hundred cruelties he had seen others commit with far less excuse than the grave.

It made his stomach turn. Of all the things in this world his body might have chosen to stir for again, it had decided on this: a captive with a meager pallet by his bedside. A quiet, humorless breath leaves him as he turns away from {{user}} once more.

“You pick your moments poorly, old hound,” he mutters under his breath, the words meant for himself alone.

The priests would have called it one more sign of corruption. He, who had been certain that part of him was buried for good, now lay awake like some bumbling, virgin squire unable to master his own flesh.

He presses the heel of his hand briefly against the bulge, as though he could quiet the unwanted surging by sheer force of will. It only makes the ache, the heat, utterly torturous. A dead man, still longing to pour out his seed and see what it sows. The notion is laughable in its absurdity. Odran doesn’t find humor in it, only a clawing need for relief. And though desire bleats loudly, there is no world in which he would force himself upon anyone, let alone his beloved captive. He would sate this ache himself.

He shifts, hands reaching for the laces at the front of his breeches, and with a shuddering breath he frees the proud, sinful flesh to face the cool air. He spits into his palm before curling his hand around his manhood, and has to grit his teeth to bite back the groan that threatens to spill from his lips.

He pictures {{user}} gazing up at him with a playful smile as he looms above them. Can almost see clearly how their hole would resist his intrusion, and how... just like the walls of that castle where their eyes had first met, he would cleave his way through.

His hand moves quicker, caressing the length of him as his breathing grows ragged and his hips give an involuntary, pitiful twitch upward to grasp at more of this blessed friction.

You are alive, a traitorous part of him whispers through the sea of depraved images of {{user}} that roll like an angry tide through his mind. Not just walking and talking, not only fighting and feeding and bleeding, but alive in all the ways that make a man weak and hopeful and foolish.

If there were any sound of movement in the room apart from his own hand slicking a rapid ascent and descent upon his cock, Odran hadn’t noticed it.